Observations at Commodity Classic from the Marketing to Farmers team
As we prepared for Commodity ...
A brief conversation about why farmers go to farm shows
Recently Jeff Walter and I attended the Farm Progress Show. My husband Dennis, a retired sales agronomist, walked the show with us. As always, we caught up with clients, media partners, friends and neighbors, and made some new friends, too. The show was well-attended; and virtually every exhibitor we asked was pleased with the traffic in their displays.
On the way home, my husband asked the question: “Why do farmers go to the Farm Progress Show?” Huh? He has worked with farmers his entire career, he grew up on a farm and we live in a farming community. Why would Dennis be asking that question?
He went on to explain his question, wondering why farmers go to farm shows when most of what they need to know is a click or tap away. We tossed the topic around for the first 100 of the 135 miles home from the show. We arrived at three key reasons:
- Community. Farm shows like Farm Progress Show or National Farm Machinery Show are places where farmers can interact with like-minded people from other areas of the state and country-folks like sales agronomists, product managers, farm media, company executives and other farmers.
- Access to an Ag Superstore. Farm shows are where farmers can shop everything for the farm in one place. Like the rest of us, farmers do a lot of research online and offline to learn about products, services and suppliers. But at some point, they want to see and touch that exciting new planter or talk to the technical rep first-hand about resistant water hemp.
- View of the Future. Farmers expect to learn about new products and services that they’ll use in the upcoming year. They also expect to hear from company executives about what’s in the pipeline. Knowing what’s coming may affect digital farming decisions or the pest management strategies they plan for next year.
Recently, we caught up with farmers at trade shows to learn about their show experiences and what is on their minds. See what they had to say.
